Heriot Watt University

School of Engineering and Physical sciences

Course: Critical analysis and Research Preparation B81EZ

Project Title: Control of a grid connected PV system for power

quality enhancement using PLL and adaptive PI controller.

MSc Programme: Renewable Energy Engineering

Student’s Name: Bashar Aldbaiat

Matriculation Number: H00331865
Supervisor: Dr Mutasim Nour
Date: 9th Apr 2021

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Table of Contents
1. Proposal .............................................................................................................................................. 3
1.2 Context: ......................................................................................................................................... 3
1.2 Novelty: ......................................................................................................................................... 3
1.3 Project objectives:......................................................................................................................... 4
1.4 Work packages .............................................................................................................................. 4
1.5 Expected outcome. ....................................................................................................................... 4
1.6 Risks and Mitigation. ..................................................................................................................... 5
1.7 Resources needed. ........................................................................................................................ 6
1.8 Beneficiaries of the work. ............................................................................................................. 6
2. Literature Review ................................................................................................................................ 7
2.1 Introduction .................................................................................................................................. 7
2.2 Smart inverter topologies: ............................................................................................................ 8
2.2.1 Smart Inverter with classic PI controller: ............................................................................... 9
2.2.2 Smart Inverter with adaptive PI controller: ........................................................................... 9
2.3 PV system with filtering capability: ............................................................................................. 10
3. Conclusion ......................................................................................................................................... 11
4. References ........................................................................................................................................ 11

Table of Figures
Figure 1: Classification of distributed power quality improvement devices [4] ..................................... 7
Figure 2: Different inverter topologies (left to right: CCM, VCM, HCM) [1] ........................................... 8
Figure 3 smart inverter as STATCOM ...................................................................................................... 9
Figure 4 feedforward-feedback control scheme .................................................................................... 9
Figure 5 distortion in inverters output voltage..................................................................................... 10
Figure 6 voltage source with filtering enhancement ............................................................................ 10
Figure 7 Gantt Chart.............................................................................................................................. 12

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 1. Proposal
1.2 Context:
Power quality is the capability of the electricity grid to provide customers with resilient,
secure, and reliable electricity [1]. Utility grid operators are obligated to follow specific
regulations to ensure grids stability and retain certain levels of power quality delivered
to customers, with more Renewable Energy Generations (REG) joining the grid,
significant share of synchronous generations is being displaced without sufficient
reactive power compensation being fed into the grid, therefore, grid’s voltage control
becomes less capable than before [1]and hence the need for more implementation of
power quality enhancement technologies is required to maintain those standards. Some
of the developing methods in this regard seek to take advantage of the growing number
of REGs connected to the grid by providing the ability to utilize REG in power quality
applications and hence doubling the benefits of such resource. Renewable energy
penetration to the grid are being adopted as a strategy in many countries across the
world, it accounts for almost 35% of the total electricity energy share [2] and it seems
that it’s just a matter of time till these green resources set on the throne of electricity
generation industry, hence the time is ripe to invest in novel solutions based on REGs
topologies.

Photo Voltic (PV) technology is one of the pioneer renewable technologies in terms of
supplying pure active power to the electrical grid, another value can be added to the
system by allowing the smart PV inverter to inject reactive power and help enhancing
the power quality of the connected grid and while the load angle in synchronous
generators cannot exceed certain levels due to mechanical constrains, an electronic
power device like PV inverter doesn’t have such limitation, smart inverters with the
help of an appropriate control system can adjust their load angle from 0 to 90 degrees
and hence open the door for full switching between active and reactive power injection
modes.
At this project we will investigate the effectiveness of a proposed phase locked loop
(PLL) technique to adjust angular displacement between inverter’s current and grid’s
voltage, PV smart inverter will switch functionality between active and reactive power
source to enhance the power quality of the connected electricity grid as needed and
observed through PQ measurements which will be monitored on the point of common
coupling (PCC).

1.2 Novelty:
Phase locked loop control (PLL) is a very common technique to adjust the angular
displacement between the injected inverter’s current and the grid’s voltage, stationary
reference frame (alpha, betta) can be employed in the control loop but it does not
sufficiently eliminate the steady state error as the stationary based control loop provides
finite gain at alternating input signals, hence in this study the synchronous reference
frame (dq0) will be employed, moreover Kp and Ki gain values of the PI controller at the
PLL circuitry will be adaptively optimized to eliminate the steady state error for an
enhanced performance under variant operational condition.

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1.3 Project objectives:

• An overview of PV’s inverters common topologies and their different

employments and implementations within the grid.
• Propose an adaptive controller to enhance phase locked loop accuracy under
different grids deviations.
• Model and simulate the proposed PV grid connected system using
MATLAB/Simulink to verify its credibility.
• To Investigate potential revenue gain for providing power quality services and
evaluate the proposed model's economic and technical benefits.

1.4 Work packages

• Review the most relevant publications and journal articles of PV grid connected
systems in terms of power quality enhancement.
• Investigate the most common control techniques that are integrated within PV
smart inverter to effectively enhance the power quality of the connected
electricity grid.
• Conduct a mathematical modelling analysis of the PV grid connected proposed
system.
• Simulate the proposed model using MATLAB/Simulink and investigate different
case scenarios by applying different loads to imitate various situations in terms of
power quality requirements.
• Observe results and evaluate the achieved outcome in comparison with the
expectations from a similar work in the field.

1.5 Expected outcome.

• Propose a current controlled PV inverter using PLL and adaptive PI controllers

to enhance the quality of the connected grid.
• Model the proposed approach to verify its reliability under different condition
using MATLAB/Simulink.

• Carrying out an analytical study on the technical and economic benefits of the
proposed system.

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1.6 Risks and Mitigation.

Risk description Likelihood Impact Mitigating action

of the risk if the
occurring risk
occurs

Selecting Control technique: Medium High Being selective and exclude

some methods and techniques.
To acknowledge and test
Focusing on few methodologies
many control techniques
to select the most appropriate
methods of inverters and
one to the pre-defined study
MPPTs which is quite
goals.
challenging considering the
huge literature and research
material in this field.

SOFTWARE: Low Medium Watch videos and demos of the

same in addition to reading
Explore MATLAB manuals to
official user manuals and
overcome any modelling
recommended books for
difficulties, this might be a
students that are listed in the
bit of challenge considering
math-works library at the
the complexity and the
official website.
diversity of such software.

Time limitation: High High Effective time management

with commitment towards
planned timetable which’s
There are different routes to outlined in Gantt chart at the
approach the same topic in end of this document.
which some are focused on
different type of math or
controlling technique such as
fuzzy logic controllers instead
of PI controllers and its
unlikely to have time to
discover and explore every
aspect of the subject to the
maximum extent.

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1.7 Resources needed.

The following resources are going to be essential throughout research preparation:

• Publications and journal’s articles of relevant topics which can be obtained

through Elsevier and IEEE using Heriot Watt access credentials in addition
to those, books and literature references will be quite essential for
understanding some of the fundamentals in power quality, the same can be
accessed through Heriot Watt discovery website.

• MATLAB and Simulink as the selected tools for testing proposed model and
carrying out associated simulations, the software package is offered through
student license by Heriot Watt, and it is available for installing on personal
computer.

• Regular meetings with supervisor to clarify research doubts and tackle any
encountered obstacle in the process.

1.8 Beneficiaries of the work.

Beneficiaries of such work are:

• Students and academic researchers interested in the same topic will be benefited
from this study.

• Solar power companies as the proposed project encourage PV systems

penetration by promoting an enhancing power quality feature that can be
obtained in addition to the existing power generation capability.

• Customers who are willing to implement this technology into their existing PV
connected grid systems for potential revenue income against provided power
quality services by their systems.

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 2. Literature Review
2.1 Introduction
Power quality is one the major concerns in today’s grid and with the escalating numbers
of distributed generations (DGs) joining the grid, many researchers are keen to take
advantage of such resources to enhance the power quality of the connected grid, the
potential profit accompanied with such services improves the cost efficacy of renewable
resources and adds more value to such investment. PV systems stands out as one of the
most popular DGs in terms of supplying active power and recently in enhancing power
quality. Grid tied PV systems can offer some advantages over other DGs technologies,
this is more noticeable in hot climate countries where the need to inject reactive power
is more present during high irradiance hours, this makes PV systems perfectly suited
for such purpose, power electronics structure within PV inverters provides far more
flexibility than conventional synchronous generators, adjusting the angular
displacement and the magnitudes of the exported voltage can be achieved through
different topologies and control techniques.

In some literatures, DG based power quality devices are considered as the third and
most recent generation of distributed generation power quality improvement (DPQI)
devices, they are referred to as MFDGs (multifunctional distributed generations) as
depicted in figure (1) below:

Figure 1: Classification of distributed power quality improvement devices [4]

Under MFDGs we can find three branched technologies based on the control
methodologies obtained within their inverters [3]. These three main control methods
are:

• Voltage control method (VCM).

• Current control method (CCM).

• Hybrid control method (HCM).

Furthermore, it’s widely common in the literature to find a proposed PV inverter that is
designed to function in a similar way to an existing power quality device from the second
generation of (DPQI), a PV inverter acting as a Static Synchronous Compensator
(STATCOM) under certain conditions is a clear example of such approach, the same was
presented in [4] as a novel smart inverter, another PV system proposals found in the

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literature aimed to mimic the functionality of power quality devices from the first
generation, this approach was introduced in [5] and [6] where PV systems were designed
to act as an active filter during low irradiance hours, the system was fully dependent on
grid’s active power when functioning as standalone filter during night time due to the
absence of electrical storage which clearly disadvantaged its economic feasibility.

2.2 Smart inverter topologies:

Different inverter topologies provide different solutions, selecting the proper topology
relies on the targeted services, for instance VCM inverters are commonly utilized to
control frequency and grids reference voltage as they mimic synchronous generator’s
behaviour in which they offer sort of electrical inertia [3], droop control is usually
employed within VCM inverters to form the grid’s voltage, such topology can be found in
[7] [8] and [9] as VCM inverters were effectively utilized to overcome voltage drops due
to load variation however the need for such stability tool is less crucial when
conventional synchronous generators are widely deployed within the supply chain.

Current control method (CCM) inverters on the other hand are very popular in power
flow applications, CCM unlike VCM inverters don’t provide electrical inertia but rather
operate as power feeder as they inject active and reactive power based on pre-defined
power setpoints, this is usually obtained through PLL circuitry to lock the phase shift
and PI controllers to regulate inverters output voltage throughout pulse width
modulation (PWM) circuit, however PLL may suffer accuracy degradation due to
deviation in the grid, such an issue was addressed in [10] and a modified time delay PLL
(MTDPLL) was proposed in this regard, another enhancement of PLL was introduced in
[11] as a one cycle forrier PLL (OCFPLL), the experimental results of (OCFPLL)
illustrated moderate settling time but with relatively higher overshoot than other
known PLL techniques.

VCM inverter are usually referred to as grid’s forming inverters as they actively control
both of the grid’s voltage and frequency while CCM are known as grid’s following
inverters as they simply follow the grid’s voltage and regulate the injected power based
on PLL input measurements of the grid’s voltage and frequency, a more in depth
comparison between these two major control schemes was carried out in [12].

Less common but a very cost-effective topology is the hybrid control method (HCM)
inverters where DGs are controlled to behave as virtual modifiable impedance to absorb
selected harmonics frequencies [3], HCM based inverters are mainly used to enhance
current harmonics compensation. An overall schematic of the main three control
methods (CCM, VCM and HCM) is illustrated in figure (2) below:

Figure 2: Different inverter topologies (left to right: CCM, VCM, HCM) [1]

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2.2.1 Smart Inverter with classic PI controller:
Many control techniques are currently employed in smart inverters, some of which are
based on the classical proportional integral (PI) controller with phase locked loop (PLL)
circuitry, PLL will be used to lock the phase between input signal which’s grids voltage
and the output signal which will be used as a reference signal in PWM circuit, PI
controllers will be employed to minimize the steady state error in both of PLL and
voltage regulation loop. Using conventional PI controller is very common due to
simplicity and decent performance, such implementation can be found in [4] the paper
presented a novel smart inverter which’s capable of switching functionality between full
real power injecting mode to a STATCOM mode in a relatively short response time (1-2
cycles) as depicted in figure (3), the conversion between these two modes was controlled
through an implemented algorithm while the voltage control was achieved via PLL
technique based on classical PI controller.

Figure 3 smart inverter as STATCOM

in [13] and [14] an improvement of PI closed loop was proposed by adding a combined
feedforward-feedback controller as depicted in figure (4) below:

Figure 4 feedforward-feedback control scheme

however, in the three previously mentioned papers [4] [13] and [14] , researchers have
proposed fixed control gains ‘Kp’ and ‘Ki’ to give the best possible results under certain
operational conditions and therefore whenever the system encounters a change within
the grid or the inverter itself due to thermal drifting for example, those controllers will
not be able to tackle that change and therefore, the steady sate error will increase, this
will affect the stability of the system and eventually will lead to not meeting designing
target.

2.2.2 Smart Inverter with adaptive PI controller:

Artificial intelligence-based techniques have become more and more implemented in the
smart inverters design to replace conventional schemes, adaptive controllers unlike the
conventional ones, keep tracking the changes and variation within the system to
compute new gains accordingly, this will enhance the system capability of meeting
design target, in [15] controllers gains were optimized and adaptively tuned using
predictive neural network controller (PNNC), the predictive neural network controller

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would keep tracking the mean square of the steady state error and sends new sets of
parameters to the controller in order to eliminate the error, another adaptive controlling
scheme was presented in [16] where a predictive model was utilized to predict the
future values of active and reactive power within connected grid while a classic PI
controller was used to optimize the dc link voltage which will be used to generate the
reference active power within the cost function block, although the system is more
flexible than conventional PWM modulation, its partially dependent on fixed gain PI
controller, moreover the output voltage shown within the study’s simulations was
heavily distorted as depicted in figure (5) below:

Figure 5 distortion in inverters output voltage

In both [17] and [18], researchers presented an approach for tuning the proportional-
integral control parameters through Genetic Algorithm (GA) to obtain optimal
parameters values, the GA program was used to adjust gain values of KP & Ki in the dc
link regulation loop, PLL was used to synch inverter’s ac output with the grids voltage,
in [17] the optimal Kp and Ki gain values were achieved after 4 generations, a slight
enhancement over classical PI performance was observed in the dc link voltage as the
voltage comes near to its reference setpoint, however the system wasn’t tested under
different grid conditions.

2.3 PV system with filtering capability:

Passive filters are commonly used with PV systems to reduce the harmonics of the
inverter output, by setting values for the inductance and capacitance shown in fig (6,d),
a high impedance can be obtained towards fundamental frequency signal while a low
one towards targeted frequencies signals in which way the targeted harmonics will be
absorbed and prevented from passing through to the grid, researchers in [19] suggested
adding a passive filters to smart inverter in which it can be sued to enhance the grid’s
power quality, however due to the fixed tunning of such filters it won’t be capable of
dealing with various abnormalities in the grid. Another filter implementation was
suggested in [20] but this time using an active filter, the previous paper presented an
effective method to compensate reactive power and provides filtering functionality
without modifying the inverter’s power stage, as a result, the active mode during night
hours consumed active power from the grid to operate which was a trade off at least
from an economic perspective.

Figure 6 voltage source with filtering enhancement

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 3. Conclusion

Different inverter control methods were viewed, relevant papers were discussed and
critically analysed. Adaptive control schemes have shown far more superiority over the
classic ones due to self-adjustment feature, the continuous generation of new gain values
helped to effectively enhance PLL circuitry accuracy. Other system components like
MPPT algorithms were not discussed here but a suitable and well tested one shall be
adopted within the proposed model. Targeted enhancement of the proposed PV grid
connected system shall be achieved through an integration between artificial intelligence
(AI) in the form of adaptive PI controller and PLL circuitry, the proposed model must be
tested under variant grid conditions to verify its credibility and robustness, a comparison
with other existing relevant papers will then be needed to shed the light on the
accomplished progress in this regard.

4. References

[1] YahyaNaderiac ,Seyed Hossein Hosseiniab, "An overview of power quality enhancement
techniques applied to distributed generation in electrical distribution networks," Renewable
and Sustainable Energy Reviews, vol. 93, pp. 201-214, 2018.

[2] IRENA, "Global Energy Transformation: A roadmap to 2050," 2018.

[3] Yahya Naderia,Seyed Hossein Hosseini,Saeid Ghassem Zadeh,Behnam Mohammadi-Ivatloo,

Juan C. Vasquezc,Josep M. Guerrero, "An overview of power quality enhancement techniques
applied to distributed generation in electrical distribution networks," Renewable and
Sustainable Energy Reviews, vol. 93, 2018.

[4] Rajiv K. Varma, Ehsan M. Siavashi, "PV-STATCOM: A New Smart Inverter for Voltage Control in
Distribution Systems," IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SUSTAINABLE ENERGY, vol. 9, pp. 1681-1691,
2018.

[5] Hugo Calleja a; Humberto Jimenez b, "Performance of a grid connected PV system used as
active filter," Energy Conversion and Management, vol. 45, p. 2417–2428, 2004.

[6] Mallikarjuna Golla; K. Chandrasekaran; Sishaj P. Simon, "PV integrated universal active power
filter for power quality enhancement and effective power management," Energy for
Sustainable Development, vol. 61, pp. 104-117, 2021.

[7] Xin Meng; Jinjun Liu; Zeng Liu, "A Generalized Droop Control for Grid-Supporting Inverter
Based on Comparison Between Traditional Droop Control and Virtual Synchronous Generator
Control," IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics, vol. 34, no. 6, pp. 5416 - 5438, 2019.

[8] Tam T.MaiAbu ;Niyam M.M.Haque ;Pedro P.Vergara ;Phuong H.Nguyen ;GuusPemen,
"Adaptive coordination of sequential droop control for PV inverters to mitigate voltage rise in
PV-Rich LV distribution networks," Electric Power Systems Research, vol. 192, 2021.

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[9] Mohammad Amin Ghasemi ; Mostafa Parniani, "Prevention of distribution network
overvoltage by adaptive droop-based active and reactive power control of PV systems," Electric
Power Systems Research, vol. 133, pp. 313-327, 2016.

[10] Eyad Radwa,, Khalil Salih,Emad Awada,Mutasim Nour, "Modified phase locked loop for grid
connected," International Journal of Electrical and Computer Engineering (IJECE), vol. 9, no. 5,
pp. 3934-3943, 2019.

[11] Luiz H.S. Silva, Alfeu J. Sguarezi Filho, Darlan A. Fernandes, Fabiano F. Costa, Antonio J.
Marques Cardoso, "A robust phase-locked loop against fundamental frequency deviations and
harmonic distortions," Electric Power Systems Research, vol. 163, pp. 338-347, 2018.

[12] D. Pattabiraman, R. H. Lasseter, T. M. Jahns, "Comparison of Grid Following and Grid Forming
Control for a High Inverter Penetration Power System," in IEEE Power & Energy Society General
Meeting (PESGM), 2018.

[13] M.A.J. Priya,B. Ashok Kumar,S. Senthilrani, "Phase Locked Loop for controlling inverter
interfaced with grid connected solar PV system," in 2018 National Power Engineering
Conference (NPEC), 2018.

[14] Jianwei Zhang; Li Li; David Dorrell; Youguang Guo, "A PI Controller with Current Feedforward to
Improve the Steady-State Error Performance for a Current Controlled Direct Matrix converter,"
in 2017 20th International Conference on Electrical Machines and Systems (ICEMS), 2017.

[15] Ahmed A.S. Mohamed, Hamid Metwally, Ahmed El-Sayed , S.I. Selem, "Predictive neural
network based adaptive controller for grid-connected PV systems supplying pulse-load," Solar
Energy, vol. 193, pp. 139-147, 2019.

[16] Kamel Barra , Djamel Rahem, "Predictive direct power control for photovoltaic grid connected
system: An approach based on multilevel converters," Energy Conversion and Management,
vol. 78, pp. 825-834, 2014.

[17] Mohamed Farhat; Mokhtar Hussein; Ahmed M. Atallah, "Enhancement performance of a three
phase grid connected photovoltaic system based on PI-genetic algorithm (PI-GA) controller," in
Nineteenth International Middle East Power Systems Conference (MEPCON), 2017.

[18] Roshdy Abdelrassoul; Yosra Ali; Mohamed Saad Zaghloul, "Genetic Algorithm-Optimized PID
Controller for Better Performance of PV System," in World Symposium on Computer
Applications & Research (WSCAR), 2016.

[19] Selcuk Sakar, Murat E. Balci, Shady H.E. Abdel Aleem, Ahmed F. Zobaa, "Increasing PV hosting
capacity in distorted distribution systems using passive harmonic filtering," Electric Power
Systems Research, vol. 148, pp. 74-86, 2017.

[20] Hugo Calleja, Humberto Jimenez, "Performance of a grid connected PV system used as active
filter," Energy Conversion and Management, vol. 45, no. 15-16, pp. 2417-2428, 2004.

[21] Mohammad sarkar,Lasantha meegahapola, D manoj datta, "Reactive Power Management in

Renewable Rich Power Grids: A Review of Grid-Codes, Renewable Generators, Support
Devices, Control Strategies and Optimization Algorithms," IEEE, 2018.

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[22] Jianwei Zhang, Li Li, David Dorrell, Youguang Guo, "A PI Controller with Current Feedforward to
Improve the Steady-State Error Performance for a Current Controlled Direct Matrix Converter,"
IEEE, 2017.

[23] G. Liu, X. Cao, W. Wang, T. Ma, W. Yang and Y. Chen, "Adaptive control strategy to enhance
penetration of PV power generations in weak grid," International Power Electronics and
Application Conference and Exposition, pp. 1217-1221, 2014.

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Figure 7 Gantt Chart